And the winner of Super Bowl XLVII: Twitter!
February 06, 2013
By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk
Are you one of the estimated 108.4 million people who watched the Super Bowl this past Sunday? The Nielsen Company said Monday that the Baltimore Ravens' 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers was the third most-viewed program in television history. Both the 2010 and 2011 Super Bowl games were slightly above this year hitting the 111 million mark.
While the game has now become a distant memory, if you were one of the viewers you have to admit it was extremely entertaining. Between the great brother vs. brother pregame storyline, a second half comeback by the 49's, all the ads, the tweets, the Facebook posts and Beyonce and girls performing an amazing halftime show, there was something for everyone! Add in that the drama of the lights going on in the stadium, and it made it the longest Super Bowl game in history. This gave CBS more airtime and allowed us all to chat more on social media as well as get up and stretch!
By now I'm sure everyone has watched the ads and heard and read the reviews to determine in their minds who are the winners and losers of the this year's Ad Bowl. Who really came out a winner, besides John Harbaugh and the Baltimore Ravens, is Twitter! The brand really supplanted itself as much more than just another social media network.
According to MarketingLand’s count of hashtag and Twitter mentions, 26 ads during the game itself had a Twitter reference compared to only 4 that referenced Facebook, one to Instagram, one to YouTube and not any to Google+. Last years only 8 ads mentioned Twitter. A total of 24.1 million Super Bowl related tweets were posted apart from the ad hashtags. A Twitter spokesperson reported that “By the beginning of the second half, the volume of Tweets had already surpassed last year’s Tweet total".
What really impressed me was when I read after the game this quote from Sarah Hofstetter who is the president of 360i, Oreo's digital agency of record that was behind this Tweet; "It was designed, captioned and approved within minutes." They were able to do this in real time because both Oreo brand members along with a team from 360i were together monitoring the game and the social media conversation in a "mission control" center at the agency's headquarters in Manhattan. Sarah also stated "You need a brave brand to approve content that quickly. When all of the stakeholders come together so quickly, you’ve got magic.”
This simple, but brilliant, execution is exactly what social media marketing is all about. It obviously cost far less than the elaborate, expensive TV ad Oreo ran in the game before the blackout which was done by their agency Wieden & Kennedy. Brands should learn from this.
Tide was another Super Bowl advertiser brand that hopped on the blackout band wagon on Twitter with this tweet:
I haven't read any further insights into how this brand was able to react so quickly. But obviously they were prepared.
So that wraps up my coverage of Super Bowl XVLII. I hope you enjoyed my posts. It really is only one football game. However, it seems to grab the attention of the world!
Congratulations again to John Harbaugh and the Baltimore Ravens for becoming this year's champions as well as Jim Harbaugh and the San Francisco 49ers for making it there. How we gonna top this next year?
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